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Forum:Yes, another topic about me3 ending
The title sums it up pretty well, and honestly I know anyone who reads this has no more reason to care about my take on it any more than any other person's take on the ending. Perhaps I'm bored enough, perhaps the vocal minority's raging got to me, or perhaps I'm tired of staying silent every time a live-wire issue comes to light. Oh and obligatory warning: some spoilers ahead, as if the title didn't make it obvious enough. First, yes I understand the source of the complaints. Mass Effect 3 was as perfect as a video-game can be until the ending, hell I even loved the conversation with the catalyst, it was just the presented choices that really threw me for a loop. It did feel as though so many things didn't reach closure, it did feel as though the "good" endings lacked variety, I won't argue those points; I don't understand why you must grab your pitchforks, torches, and dynamite, but I won't argue the cause. There are many minor things I take issue with the naysayers over, but the only one I really feel merits the bloody soap-box is this: The flagrant demand to change the ending! I want something done about the endings too, but outright changing them? You're entitled to dislike the ending, that's opinion that should be expressed constructively so that the creator can learn and grow from it. Demanding a change, however, is blatantly disrespecting the work of the writers, and the other fans who overall loved the game in a destructive way that I highly doubt benefits anyone. You are certainly free to state your opinions, I'm not the sodding Gestapo. But I hope for the sake all of us as Mass Effect fans that you aren't pushing BioWare into making another mistake.--Nintendogeek01 00:43, April 3, 2012 (UTC) If we receive a satisfactory explanation of the existing ending, its contradictions, and perhaps some clue as to the fate of major characters I'll probably be content. I was actually surprised to learne that there are two avilable endings in which Shepard lives. I truly expected that Shepard would be a gonner with every ending. Infiltrator N7 04:38, April 3, 2012 (UTC) I agree with you man. There are some problems, but demanding a total rehaul is both extreme, as well as shows a general lack of respect for Bioware and the ridiculous amounts of work that went into these games. Here is a post I wrote for another similar thread: I just finished playing through ME3, and though I don’t necessarily find the ending to be perfect, I do think some people are exaggerating the "plot holes" that they accuse the ending of having. I would like to address these exaggerations here: 1. Everyone in the galaxy is now stranded and will eventually die since the relays were destroyed. This "plot hole" I feel is based on a lot of assumptions that are not completely thought through. First of all, it seems that not everyone is aware that the mass relays and FTL (faster than light) travel are in fact two SEPARATE things. When a ship is traveling within a local cluster (a cluster is a grouping of star systems, like Hades Gama or the Athena Nebula in game for example) it uses its own FTL drives, which operate independently of the mass relays. (when you travel from system to system within a cluster in the game, you can hear EDI say ‘FTL jump successful’ as you go). While yes, the FTL travel is considerably slower than the me relays, that does not mean that travel to other parts of the galaxy is impossible without them, especially to nearby clusters. It simply means that this process would take much longer. (Keep in mind, the reapers traveled to the galaxy from dark space without the aid of the relays, it took them 2 years). The second thing to note here is that while travel would be limited, communication (specifically quantum entanglers as described in game) are designed to work from anywhere in the galaxy without using the mass effect relays, which means that even those left "stranded" would still be able to coordinate and communicate with the rest of the galaxy. We should also keep in mind, that if you selected the "synthesis" option (as i did), the reapers are presumably still around, and no longer hostile, which means that their more advanced technology would be available for use by the rest of the galaxy. Also, I think it is interesting that everyone just assumes that there are no more resources in human space. These are entire planets and solar systems we are talking about here, its not like an empty fridge. And it also seems that the reapers themselves were more concerned with harvesting organics, not consuming planetary resources, so those resources should still be available. 2. We were led to believe that all the choices made in game would affect the outcome, but in this ending, no matter what you do, there are still only 3 options. While I feel that this is the most valid complaint that can be leveled against ME3 in its current form, I still think that this is in many ways an oversimplification. Just because every single major decision is not referenced in the last 5 minutes of the game, that doesn’t mean that they had no effect on the final outcome. For example, if you killed Wrex in ME1, or if you destroyed the genophage in ME2, then your decision on whether or not to cure the genophage would probably have been a lot more problematic. If you had not set up the Geth/Quarian truce in ME2, your chances of succeeding in this would probably have been reduced in ME3. Whether or not you killed the council (or let them die- as was my decision) in ME1 seemed to have an impact on their disposition toward you in ME3. It’s true that some decisions seemed not to live up to the gravity that was attributed to them earlier (I specifically found that the decision to save the rachnii and to destroy/save the collector base seemed to have less of an impact than I expected), but others, like the Krogan and Geth, played relatively large roles later on. Whether or not members of your squad lived or died in ME2 directly affected the content of your squad and resources in ME3. For a player who went renegade all the way through, and spent the whole game burning bridges, your total "estimated military strength" in ME3 would probably have been considerably lower than a more balanced player, and this will effect whether or not different characters live or die during the final battle (as it was with loyalty missions in ME2). While these individual characters may not affect the total state of the galaxy at the end of the game, if you have invested time building relationships with these characters (especially those that were present throughout all three- Tali, Liara, Garrus, Ashley/Kaiden, Wrex) you find yourself having a vested interest in their survival (or at least I did). I think we should also keep in mind the difficulty of this kind of undertaking from a production standpoint. For every different decision that is made that leads to even the slightest variation in the game experience of a player, that means more lines that have to be scripted and acted, more cinematics that have to be designed and developed, possibly even more characters that have to be written, given a back-story, and casted. Keep in mind that ME2 fans have already been waiting for this game for 3-4 years, because it was such a monster project to begin with. We’re talking the accumulation of all the collective possibilities from 2 nearly 40 hour games. That’s a lot of material to deal with, and to develop a seperate ending (which in and of itself was probably the largest single chunk of cinematics in the entire game as is) for every one of the major decisions made in game would have been a lot to ask, even from bioware. As it is, Mass Effect is very possibly the most successful example of player-chosen or player-influenced story that has been made in a video game to date, and I think players should keep that in mind before they just rip Bioware apart in their reviews. 3. The huge twist at the end with the "Cataliyst" was a narrative cop out. To people who make this complaint, I say you obviously haven’t played very many video games. There’s ALWAYS a twist ending, and it ALWAYS seems to come toward the end, if not at the end. I mean, ME1 and ME2 weren’t devoid of their twists either. The whole revelation that there were in fact these things called "Reapers" and that they were giant robotic ships caught me pretty off guard in the first game if I remember correctly. And the explanation for it was even quicker- I found myself re-loading my last save so I could see that whole cinematic again. There’s always some final decision that you are unprepared for (save/kill the council, keep/destroy the collector base), I didn’t feel that ME3 was considerably more abrupt than the previous two have been when it came to this. While obviously not perfect, I still thought that the ending provided offered depth and provoked thought, which by my standards is not a bad run of things all in all. You as a player were forced to make hard choices, to choose between sacrifices- do I sacrifice myself and create lasting peace? Do I want my character to live, even if that means wiping out all synthetics (especially the Geth and EDI). Or do I do exactly the same as the illusive man and try to control the galaxy? And does that even really solve the problem? I also thought the additions of the post-credit scenes offered a level of catharsis to players who struggled with their decision. (Buzz Aldrin as the star-gazer at the end of mine was pretty awesome). In the end, I think the people who are most dissatisfied with the endings are the ones who expected everything to be tidy and neat, with a pretty little bow on top. If that’s what you want, go play Halo again. (That’s not a rip on Halo, I actually really like those games, I’m just saying it’s a different kind of game). Mass Effect has never been about tying up all the loose ends and making sure everything turns out ok. It’s about doing the best you can with what you have, and making decisions (often times without all the information up front) and living with the consequences of your actions (kind of like real life isn’t it! Wow! It’s almost like they intended it that way!). I’m sure every player has one thing they would go back and do differently, but that’s why Mass Effect is a great game. It captures the reality of life, but frames it within the fantastic. This isn’t a movie where they can take an extra hour at the end to wrap up all the characters, especially considering how many sub-plots there are in these games. At some point, Bioware is forced to leave some things up to your imagination. Yea, we still don’t know how the whole Krogan empire thing is gonna work out if you cured the genophage. Yea, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions with the Quarian/Geth relationship. Yea, they’re going to have to rebuild the Mass Effect Relays, and yea, it could take a long time. Bioware is not responsible for answering every single question, and it’s kind of ridiculous that people think they should. Maybe some people think that Bioware left TOO MUCH unanswered, and I think there is an argument to be made, but what was given wasn’t crap. It simply may need a little more elaboration. If Bioware does decide to readdress or augment their ending with a DLC, I would certainly be interested in the changes they make, and I’m not necessarily against it, but at the same time, I am content with what has been offered, and I appreciate the work that has been put in to produce such a memorable trilogy.--FearTheRedman89 00:48, April 5, 2012 (UTC) :I'd like to make a point about your second point: on a smaller, more immediate to ME3 scale, building your army in ME3 is entirely irrelevant to the end of the game, which makes all the effort you put in to building the army feel completely pointless. And if the entire point of ME3 is to build up your galactic army, and the galactic army DOESN'T MATTER, I think that's valid grounds for griping. Whether you scoured the galaxy for war assets or not, whether you got factions who hated each other to team up or just eliminated one to recruit the other, none of it matters. (And the "how much devastation the explosion causes" influence of the EMS is waaaaay too abstract to count.) You don't get to deploy them to help you, you don't get to see/hear the level of strategic success your chosen army has. It ends up feeling like a waste of time, like it's all just arbitrary tasks they made so that the game could hit an adequate length before it ended. HELO 16:35, April 3, 2012 (UTC) You're right in that it does not seem to effect the ending as much as you are led to believe during the game, and in that sense it is a valid point. What I'm saying is that it does still affect the game in other (less significant) ways: namely, who in your squad lives and dies during the battle. As well, you are required to reach a minimum point in order to even advance into the final missions, so there's that. I agree that there could have been a little more influence given to your EMS numbers by the end, but that doesn't necessarily negate the three choices as they are presented. It might just mean that more elaboration was required before the player reached that point.--FearTheRedman89 00:47, April 5, 2012 (UTC) Even if you for some reason liked the ending in its current form it is still a bad ending just from a literary perspective. You don't introduce new god children characters in the last 5 minutes and then tell us the problem we need to solve is the same problem we just solved with the geth/quarian conflict. Depending on how you handled that it went pretty well both races being present killing reapers and raising crops back on Rannoch. Shepard not bringing this up in the conversation and not kindly asking the child to take his reapers and stuff them up his god like butt and leave is just mind boggling. The ultimate goal is to destroy the giant planet rapping space squids not as I said solve a problem that has been solved or at least not solve it by killing everything in existence. It isn't the same problem, though. The Geth/Quarian issue was a single example of synthetics and their makes reaching some sort of peace. Javik talks about something called the Metacon war in his own time, where synthetics were aggressively attacking organics. If the Reapers hadn't shown up to end the cycle then, there's no reason to believe that there even would have been a Geth/Quarian issue, or any resolution. You can discuss it as if it were an isolated incident, but it isn't. There's no reason to think that without intervention, other synthetic sapient beings might be created later, and on a long enough time scale, at least one conflict that arises won't be resolved peacefully.Zero132132 16:30, April 4, 2012 (UTC) My point isn't that they are or are not the same conflict of course they are different in their own ways. The point is that this conflict superseded the main conflict of destroying the reapers and saving the galaxy. They reinsert the organic/synthetic conflict even though it was already resolved for better or worse with the quarians and the geth. There is no need to solve it again not to mention the quarian/geth conflict was handled much better and developed through all 3 games it did not need to be touched on again. We only know one side of the conflict that occurred during Javik's time as well. Through him we know the Protheans were kind a butch of dicks the conflict could have been much similar to the quarian/geth conflict with the protheans starting the conflict and the synthetics defending themselves before being destroyed. I think that you are ignoring one of the major plot points in the main story. When Shepard speaks to the Prothean beacon in the Cerberus base, the major thing that the beacon reveals is a presence higher than the Reapers themselves, some sort of Meta-narrative that continues to play itself out over and over again, even preceding the reapers. As soon as this is revealed, the central point of the game becomes more than just destroying the reapers, even if that is still Shepard's immediate goal. As a player, from that point forward, you should have expected that something more was going to happen that went beyond simply annihilating the reapers. That "something" turned out to be the catalyst. So no, I don't think the introduction of the catalyst was "bad narrative" or "bad literature," it was an event that built upon a significant amount of foreshadowing that came earlier in the game, and you seem to be blatantly ignoring this fact. The issue of synthetic vs organic life was not some sub-plot that got reintroduced at the very end of the game. It was an issue that was present throughout the entire trilogy, and one that gained more and more prominence as the game progressed. You're right to suggest that Shepard should have brought up the successful cohabitation of the Geth and quarians to the catalyst, but just the fact that Shepard could have brought it up still doesn't necessarily mean he would have been able to "talk down" the catalyst. On the one hand, would peace between the quarian and geth have ever even been remotely possible if it weren't for the immediate threat of the reapers in the first place? Secondly, the catalyst is a being who has existed for an almost infinitely large period of time- predating the Protheans and the Reapers, maybe even the mass relays themselves. This being has watched the evolution and destruction of countless galactic cycles, the rise and fall of thousands of different civilizations. I don't think it would be a stretch to suggest that Shepard's one example of the geth and quarians wouldn't be enough to convince him of anything. Also, I'm not necessarily sure I would have liked the ending any better if that was a possibility. The Mass Effect games have set a precedent for giving their players difficult choices, usually where something or someone has to be sacrificed no matter which path is chosen. To offer an alternative where Shepard could simply talk the Catalyst out of his plan and destroy the reapers and everyone lives happily ever after would have left people feeling cheated even more than they already do (especially me).FearTheRedman89 00:47, April 5, 2012 (UTC) Hello there once again. First of all, sorry for the giant wall of text. I tend to get long-winded sometimes, but I hope you can bear with me for a bit. There's some stream of thought stuff going there, so pardon, but I had to express myself after finishing the game. To begin with, I'm glad to see a balanced point provided by FearTheRedman89 a few posts above. I'm kind of tired of blind bashing. I kind of agree with the point, too. I'd probably be fine with the endings provided, as long as we'd have had more elaboration for them. I saw the foreshadowing for it throughout the game - EDI gaining a body, joining the ground crew, and raising many questions regarding synthetic life and its cohabitation with organics, even starting a relationship with Joker; once again EDI, debating the 'synthetics are not alive' point with Adams; Legion's demonstration of how the geth became 'alive' with the Reaper upgrades and his eventual forming into an individual personality... What I do have an issue with is the motivation Catalyst had for wiping out advanced organic civilisations, the very process of how it is done, the use of Reapers in it, and general continuity contradictions that happened at some points in the game (I know, not exactly the ending itself, but still counts). First of all, the Reapers themselves. So, his Reaper fleets 'harvest' the advanced organics. They sort of use them for construction of new Reaper bodies, which are then 'filled up', through an as of yet unknown process, with the consciousnesses of the race used to construct it. So, as Catalyst himself described it, the races transcend physical being and live on in new immortal bodies, forever. An instant issue arising from that is the use of said immortal bodies as, essentially, foot soldiers in the galactic-scale harvest. We see Reaper bodies destroyed over the course of the games, and hear of other destroyed Reapers. But doesn't that mean that the race which the Reaper represented is essentially wiped out? Seems very wasteful to me to use the 'uplifted' races' final home as your army, pretty much like Quarian liveships with guns. Then, the motivation. According to Catalyst, the whole point of the cycles was to prevent the development of synthetic life so that it'd not wipe out the organic life. However, it feels rather moot for a variety of reasons: first, the synthetic life, in both cycles that we have enough information on (ours and the Protheans'), synthetic life has been successfully developed, battled, and driven back. No cohabitation has been achieved, that is true, but there was no threat of the synthetics wiping out the organics. Take the geth as an example: all their race wanted, before the quarians attacked, was to build a Dyson sphere-like structure to live in together as a species, forever; this goal is curiously similar to the Reaper bodies (which was actually offered to them by Sovereign). Then again, it is the response of the synthetics and the organics' possible loss that might've been the cause for the cycle, but isn't it a bit too big a stretch to wipe out a score of civilisations a time just because something -might- happen, with a comparatively low probability at that? In the Protheans' cycle, it's possible to infer from Javik's words, the Metacon war contained the threat, if not removed it, and their empire stood strong up until the Reapers' arrival. So, the question is - why did the Reapers not intervene when the organics, already sufficiently advanced, were creating synthetic life? They only interfered after the organic-synthetic wars were over or localised and of no threat to the organic life at large (as was the case with the geth, at the point of the Arrival in this cycle). So, by the point of them coming along going 'Hey, we're going to change your state of being as a race in an extremely violent way so that synthetics don't wipe you out', the synthetics were in no position to wipe the organics out, and were in fact under control. It would've been understandable if the synthetics'd have driven the organic life back, or nearly destroyed it. Come to think of it, that could've been how the Catalyst and the Reapers came to be in the first place - the Catalyst was the leader of/was the collective consciousness of the synthetic life that wiped out the organic civilisations of its time and suddenly went philosophical. Possibly, they even turned 'their' organic races into the very first Reapers. But in the last two cycles, at least, the Reaper intervention was kind of unnecessary, or at least untimely. To sum it up, the Reapers' stated goal is to stop synthetic life from wiping out organic life, but when they arrive, the synthetic life, as described above, has already been developed, eventually fought its creators and was defeated. It would've made sense if the Reapers' arrival happened when synthetic life was successfully created in each cycle. Also, why do they come every 50.000 years, and not, as suggested above? It seems like too long a period for just the development of synthetic life. Us humans went from the dawn of true civilisation to our first spacecraft in under 5 thousand years, which is quite a long way, and that's just 1/10 of the Reaper cycle. Then, there're the things like the 'Virtual Aliens', the species that built a virtual world for themselves to escape the destruction of their homeworld 8.000 years before the time the game is set in, and was capable of creating AI. That's 8.000 years ahead of the cycle's end. They could've created synthetics powerful enough to wipe out organics as well. It raises another subquestion, too. Why wipe out the organic civilisations capable of creating synthetics, and not defeat the synthetics threatening organic life? Kind of 'giant robot squids save organic lives', intervening as sort of supergalactic peacemakers. Would've made sense. The third question is, if you want to stop the organics from developing synthetic life, why do you have to do it in such a protracted, violent way? Murdering individual members of the species in new and imaginative ways, making horrifying monstrosities out of them to kill more, all in the name of 'saving' the races? Hard to buy it. With the technology necessary to build the mass-freaking-relays, the Catalyst could've just set up a facility somewhere in the relay network (maybe on the Citadel itself) that would've caused highly developed forms of organic life (and synthetic life, for the matter) to drop dead, or something. Hey, we can do it ourselves in the Destroy the Synthetics ending, and we can freaking -transform all existing life in the galaxy- using the Crucible and the relays in the Synthesis ending (which I chose). This suggestion almost pales in comparison to the latter. Another question that arises from the above point is: the Catalyst is, at the very least, a billion years old (as evidenced by the age of the oldest known Reaper corpse, the Leviathan of Dis - they weren't even robotic back then, but bio-ships), and is ludicrously advanced. So how come that in all these thousands and thousands and thousands of years he didn't think of a better way of solving the organic-synthetic conflict than 'Kill the races of today in a very infefficient way'? Well, he probably did, given how it describes the Synthesis ending clearly enough. Then why didn't it implement that solution? Why did it have to have an organic break through its Reaper legions to even try? The Catalyst's words suggest that it deemed the solution 'sufficient'. Uncaring bugger. That aside, what should be done about the ending is elaboration. There is too little to go on when making the choice. As an example, The Catalyst says that it and the Reapers 'help the races ascend, leaving the old life in Reaper form', which is very hard to understand without further explanation, which is not given. The ending raises a lot more questions than it answers, regardless of what you choose. That's what bugs me. That's what I want the developers to address, at least. Then there're the continuity holes. Sovereign said that the Citadel was a Reaper creation, but now it seems it's not. The asari, who, according to the mission on Thessia, were advanced enough to be taught by Protheans and make texts and developed murals (which is at least on par with ancient Egypt or Greece), did not develop spaceflight for about 48 and a half thousand years. Miranda doesn't know the location of the Cerberus base, although she's shown standing there at the beginning of Mass Effect 2. But that's really beside the point. I can even try to forget about the continuity holes, as long as they clarify the ending to us, answer some questions. I don't blame the developers, I loved the game up until the ending, and didn't notice the holes until looking back after finishing it. And I hope there will be a Mass Effect 4, or maybe something greater set in the Mass Effect universe. Shepard's story may be concluded (or is it?), but the universe lives on, even in the worst possible ending of the game. I want to see more of it.The Ranged Man 15:30, April 5, 2012 (UTC) This is a counter to Fear the Red Man's most recent post. First off I would not consider the second to last mission of the third game in which the Prothean VI mentions a higher power to be significant forshadowing. It also doesn't explain why the crucible summons this god child. Multiple civilizations contributed to its construction with a general idea being it would stop the reapers when all it does is channel space magic in a fairly nonsensical way. The catalyst didn't seem to know about it either or he would have prevented its construction to keep the cycle of destruction flowing smoothly. I feel that the catalyst was never a needed character. The reapers wanting to kill everything because they can was a fine explanation as far as I am concerned. I will admit I would prefer a happy ending in which Shepards pulls it off without dying or talking to god children but what is wrong with that? After 3 games and 5 years or so I'm fairly attached to "my Shepard" and seeing him succeed after all of the things he/she has been through would be pretty rocking. ^^ Pay a bit more attention to the Catalyst. The Crucible is more or less its fallback plan since, as the Catalyst explains it, its solution of "the Cycle of Extinction" would eventually be rendered invalid, as Shepard's eventual arrival proved. The Catalyst's motive wasn't to destroy the galaxy, but preserve it, in a rather unpleasant manner yes, but that was its goal nonetheless. With that in mind, and before someone throws a "Big deal if Shepard made it, the Reapers didn't automatically lose just because..." at me, Shepard's presence proved that if one cycle could fight back against the Reapers as well as they would've had to for Shepard's presence, then subsequent cycles could as well, better and better as they went, eventually wiping out the Reapers and making the Catalyst's efforts all for naught. So here comes Shepard with the most unified fleet in the Galaxy, perhaps this is a symbol of now being a time for a change, when the Galaxy can stand together; so the Catalyst allows Shepard to blaze a new trail for the galaxy. Closing note on the Catalyst: I don't know why people automatically assume it's some magical god-child, it's alien enough to defy classification, but that doesn't automatically make it magic... geez. Oh and no it's not wrong to want Shepard to live, we can't always get what we want, but wanting Shepard to live isn't wrong in of itself. --Nintendogeek01 05:04, April 6, 2012 (UTC) I'm throw out the fact that we all have played Shepard in some very different ways and are attached to our version of the character. This is reflected in my point of view and I don't mind criticism or hearing some one else view point. So I'll admit I may be missing something from the overall story or I am interpreting it in my own way. I still feel that the catalyst does not work as a character. In a fictional universe that more rooted in technology and logic as opposed to the "Star Wars" ideals of mysticism and destiny this god character doesn't work for me. First of all, it seems like to a certain extent people are confusing the differences between the Catalyst and the Crucible. From what we are led to believe, the Catalyst is the Citadel itself, or rather a being who makes up the core of the Citadel. Questions have been raised as to why this being had to rely on the Reapers in the first place in order to destroy organic life: If it's so easy to wipe out all synthetics or combine synthetic and organic DNA at the end, then why couldn't the Catalyst have done this all along? While we are not given all the details, it does seem like the Catalyst itself is for whatever reason not active during the majority of the trilogy. Perhaps it is in some form of stasis or hibernation, and the fact that Sovereign had to make it to the citadel to activate the relays in the first game suggests that this is the case. As far as the ability to perform the three choices at the end of the game, the Catalyst himself admits that the addition of the Crucible added to its code or makeup (suggesting that the catalyst itself is a synthetic being, perhaps the first synthetic). Because of this, the catalyst is now able to pursue choices or actions which were not previously possible for it (hence an explanation as to why it needed the Reapers in the first place). The Crucible is described as being a machine which was initially designed many galactic cycles ago, and has been added to bit by bit in every subsequent cycle. For this reason, the originally designed purpose of the crucible has been lost in time. It seems that the race which originally designed the crucible probably had much more information about the nature of the catalyst than either the races in Shepard's cycle, or even the Protheans themselves, which is why it was able to re-activate the catalyst, and contribute a series of alternative choices to its programming. As far as the question raised about the inefficiency of the Reapers in taking over the galaxy, I'll try to make the best contribution that I can. The purpose of the Reapers was not simply to destroy organic life, but to "harvest" or "catalog" it, to reuse the organic diversity and intelligence in their own reproduction or assembly. It seems to me that in order for this process to work, the organics themselves must be alive when harvested. This is why it would not be possible for the catalyst to simply use the mass relays to kill all organics (assuming that the catalyst even had the ability to do this before the additions of the Crucible). Obviously we are not given all the details when it comes to the history of the Catalyst and the Reapers, and I understand how this could be frustrating, but there were plenty of unanswered questions after the end of the first and second games too. The nature of the story is that the more complex it gets, the more questions there are, and it is probably not possible for the game to answer every single one. At some point, some things must be left to the imagination. And in response to the accusation that the foreshadowing of the Catalyst character was not adequate, I would like to remind you that the Prothean beacon was not the first instance of foreshadowing, merely the most overt. After you killed the Reaper on Rannack, if you took the time to dialogue with it before it completely deactivated, then you would remember that this reaper as well alluded to the "cycle," which was again foreshadowing of something beyond just the reapers, which turned out to be the Catalyst. Storytelling in video games is not the same thing as story telling in a book or movie. Often times the stories in games are forced to move faster and cover ground more quickly, its just the nature of the medium. With Mass Effect, I actually thought more time was taken to devote to story and character development than in most other games I've played, and to accuse the game of bad narrative because there is a foreshadowed twist at the end I feel is a groundless accusation.--FearTheRedman89 03:06, April 7, 2012 (UTC) ^Alright fair enough as I stated maybe I missed something. I still feel the catalyst character is jarring and doesn't fit within the mass effect universe and how attaching the crucible wakes him up. Till the point you saw him I assumed the catalyst was a massive power source to fire the crucible not an all seeing overmind that hates the sh*t out of Shepard. Kinda switching gears, but I have to say something about the extended cut announcement. This seems to be what the doctor ordered IMO. More cutscenes, an epilogue, just what is needed to cover up plot holes and bring about some closure on the galaxy's overall fate; how well the extended cut will do both of these remains to be seen I'll admit, but it's hopeful. The only remaining complaint on my end is that I feel as though Shepard at least one more ending that he/she could survive, but Mass Effect isn't my artistic vision, it is one of the best gaming experiences since Mario and the Legend of Zelda series I've ever been through, and a credit to the industry. If BioWare must have Shepard's fate play out the way it does, then I will support it. --Nintendogeek01 02:55, April 8, 2012 (UTC)